Imagine a hospital as a sentient being that holds within it all things necessary to heal you from illness or injury. The HIM department, or medical records department, is this being's memory. Without it, there would be no continuum of patient care. Sometimes, it's the hospital's memory that serves to produce an otherwise overlooked diagnosis.
Also known as the "mega rules," the omnibus final rules are clarifications and finalizations of the HIPAA rules of 2003, the HITECH rules of 2008, and the incorporation of the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) rules into the Privacy and Security rules. These are not sweeping changes, as many describe, but clarifications. In most cases, what are now final rules are best practices that organizations should already be following.
Eleven years ago, when hospitals and other healthcare facilities were on the cusp of the new HIPAA Privacy Rule, Kathleen A. Frawley, JD, MS, RHIA, FAHIMA, spoke words that were prophetic.
Most soon-to-be HIM professionals fresh out of college want nothing more than to know what's going on inside the HIM director or manager's head. After all, it would help to know what a potential interviewer is thinking when you pop into that chair for your first interview for a potential HIM job, wouldn't it?
Managing coders is challenging enough when you work with them face to face. Manage them when they are off-site, though, and you've got a whole new set of challenges. You may rarely have the chance to shake their hand, see them smile, or read their body language in meetings. Are they productive? Are they happy? If you can't reach them, do you know what's going on?
HIM directors can always do more to gear up for the super transition into ICD-10 next year. In fact, one way you can begin preparing is to pinpoint specific elements in ICD-9 that already exist in the record and will be documentation and coding musts once the new code set arrives.
As an HIM director, you are responsible for the integrity of your patients' records-even when your hospital shuts down certain wings of the facility or closes its doors entirely.
This article is based on the results of HCPro's annual MRB salary survey. Data in this article represent the responses of 292 HIM professionals from hospitals in the following categories:
